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Jim (Peter O'Toole) is a promising young English merchant seaman who rises to first officer under Captain Marlow (Jack Hawkins). However, Jim is injured and left at Java. When he is fit again, he signs on with the first available ship, a dilapidated freighter called the S.S. Patna, crammed with hundreds of Muslims on pilgrimage to Mecca. When a storm threatens the leaking ship, the crew panics and takes to the lifeboats without a thought for their passengers; Jim in a moment of weakness joins them.

When they reach port, the sailors are stunned to find an intact Patna already there before them. The rest of the crew disappears, but Jim insists on confessing his guilt at an official enquiry and is stripped of his sailing papers. Filled with self-loathing, Jim becomes a drifter.

One day, he saves a boatload of gunpowder from sabotage. Stein (Paul Lukas), the cargo's owner, offers him an extremely dangerous job: transporting it and some rifles by river to distant Patusan to help Stein's old friend, the town's chief, lead an uprising against bandits led by the General (Eli Wallach).

When Schomberg (Akim Tamiroff) is bribed to deny Stein the use of the motorboat he had promised, Jim takes a sailboat with two native crewmen, leaving the aged Stein behind. As they near their destination, one of the crewmen reveals himself to be working for the General. He kills the other sailor then flees to warn the warlord. Jim manages to hide the cargo before he is captured.

Though tortured, he refuses to divulge the location. This surprises Cornelius (Curt Jürgens), the drunken, cowardly agent of Stein's trading company, who in fact obeys the General. That night, the Girl (Daliah Lavi) leads Jim's rescue.

Jim distributes the arms and plans the attack on the General's stockade. He is assisted by Waris (Juzo Itami), the chief's son. After much bloody fighting, Jim delivers the crushing blow, pushing a barrel of gunpowder through a hail of bullets into the bandits' final stronghold, blowing it up along with the General. Only Cornelius survives, hidden in a secret underground room with the General's loot.

Jim is hailed as a hero. One of the grateful natives bestows the title tuan on him. The Girl translates it as "Lord".

While Jim is content to live in Patusan with the Girl, Cornelius and Schomberg recruit notorious cutthroat "Gentleman" Duncan Brown (James Mason) and his men to steal the treasure. However, they are detected and cornered. Brown offers to leave peacefully, but no one, with one exception, trusts him. Jim insists they be allowed to go, going so far as to offer his own life as forfeit if anybody is killed as a result. However, under cover of heavy fog, Brown and his men make one last attempt at the treasure, killing a sentry and fatally wounding Waris, before Waris and Jim dispatch them.

Afterward, Stein pleads with his grieving old friend to spare Jim; the chief agrees not to hinder Jim's departure, but if he is still in Patusan the next day, there will be no mercy. Despite Stein's urgings, Jim refuses to desert again. In broad daylight, he calmly walks up to the chief as the people are lined up for Waris's funeral procession, cocks the rifle he brought and places it near the chief, then awaits his fate. The bodies of Jim and Waris are cremated together.

The film opened to bad reviews and to minimal box office returns. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called Lord Jim a "big, gaudy, clanging color film" that "misses at being either Conrad or sheer entertainment cinema."[5] Nor was he satisfied with O'Toole's performance, characterizing it as "so sullen, soggy and uncertain, especially toward the end, that it is difficult to find an area of recognizable sensitivity in which one can make contact with him."[5]Variety was equally critical, stating, "Brooks has teetered between making it a fullblooded, no-holds-barred adventure yarn and the fascinating psychological study that Conrad wrote."[6] O'Toole's performance was described as "self-indulgent and lacking in real depth."[6] The consensus was that Brooks, who did good dramas about people, didn't have what it took to make a classic story. O'Toole, however, would later stand by the film: he said the role of Lord Jim was the finest role he ever did.

^NOVEL BY HALEVY WILL BE FILMED: 'The Young Lovers' Slated for Production by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. This Year 'Lord Jim' Acquired Of Local Origin By THOMAS M. PRYOR Special to The New York Times.. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 04 Mar 1957: 30.